All embroidery machines I have seen in the last - say - ten years were retrofitted with a floppy emulator like the Gotek, (only as an example, there are tens of possibly the same devices sold under n brands/names):
Gotek are awesome. I use one in an old 486 and it works really well as a floppy drive replacement. Especially with the FlashFloppy firmware replacement.
Yeah! A DX2 66Mhz, with a real mechanical hard drive, in a real beige case with a turbo button :D Some modern "amenities" I have are the gotek, and a CF Card to IDE adapter, so I can more easily copy files to it.
I use it mostly for Borland C++, but also Solitaire in Windows 3.1.
That’s awesome. Is it a vintage drive as well? I wonder about the failure points - CMOS battery meltdown, moving parts. If you can eliminate these, you can probably run that 486 for life.
I was imagining something like a cassette tape->line in adapter like used to be common go play your ipod through your car stereo. I.e. something that would emulate the actual disk, not the disk drive.
gotek is fine if your device uses FAT formatted floppies. If your device has a custom format, you need an HxC drive or HxC firmware fr a Gotek drive. Also, I have some devices that don't use standard 34 pin floppy connectors so I had to learn Kicad to build 26 to 34 pin adapters.
All of my floppy using devices are synthesizers or samplers, and keeping them around is not a matter of not being able to afford to upgrade, but rather than many of these devices have very unique sounds that aren't replicated by newer equipment.
All embroidery machines I have seen in the last - say - ten years were retrofitted with a floppy emulator like the Gotek, (only as an example, there are tens of possibly the same devices sold under n brands/names):
https://www.gotekemulator.com/
https://www.gotekemulator.com/P_view.asp?pid=61